NEw sustainablE fuel Deployment Scenarios for the European waterborne community: NEEDS Deployment of sustainable energy within an existing transport network is a challenge which requires an independent and transparent analysis and overview. To be successful, it implies a timely coordination of all stake holders, from energy production capacity, to storage & bunkering logistics in harbours and up to the end-users: the inland waterways and maritime transport, and waterborne activities. Much information about each stake holders, their characteristics in terms of technical readiness, emission level, actual transport capacity, costs, scalability and impact are available. Putting all parts of the puzzle together is the aim of the present study. We are ready to apply existing scenario simulation techniques, containing among others regional information on transport network and hindcast data of weather conditions (for regional energy production), to simulate different scenarios of sustainable fuel deployment. Forcing certain variables as input into the model in order to study its impact on other quantities, will help evaluating the viability of certain scenarios or identify bottlenecks and best tactics to overcome them. This dynamic techno-economic model will hopefully help the commission, the member states, the regional waterborne community and the harbours evaluating the most efficient pathways towards their energy transition, for local to regional scale. The amount of details brought into the parameters of the model will allow to run such simulation from micro to macro scale. The model will primarily focus on variables and parameters related to the waterborne community. However, it will not be closed and will able a possible future inclusion of other sources of energy needs, if made available from land-based activity and transport, or aviation.

SUREWAVE will develop and test an innovative concept of Floating Photo-Voltaic (FPV) system consisting of an external floating breakwater structure acting as a protection against severe wave-wind-current loads on the FPV modules, allowing increased operational availability and energy output, thus unlocking the massive deployment of Offshore FPV. It will be focused on the research for securing optimal behaviour at aero & hydrodynamic and structural integrity level of the external breakwater, the internal FPV modular structure, the connections, the mooring and anchoring and the whole FPV system, complying with mechanical, electrical (maximizing energy output) and cost-efficiency requirements, ensuring high lifetime of critical components, high reliability of the system and easy, quick and cost-efficient, construction, installation and O&M of the whole system. This will require: 1) the development of novel circular concrete material solutions for the breakwater, cost-effective, easy to produce and with high mechanical, physical and durability properties and low CO2 footprint. 2) the development of an advanced predictive computational modelling and simulation framework: coupled aero & hydrodynamic modelling, Structural integrity modelling, material properties modelling and Structural Health Management to reduce CAPEX and OPEX; 3) the design and implementation of an optimal testing and validation methodology for offshore FPV system to achieve TRL5, including lab testing, basin-model testing and marine environment testing of critical components assuring high resilience to corrosion and biofouling. Maximum advantage of existing expertise will be taken from experts in: offshore wind floating structures, material and phenomena modelling (SINTEF, MARIN, CEIT), design and installation of FPV in calm waters (SIS), floating solutions (CLEMENT), circular structural and non-structural materials (ACC) and in social, environmental and economic assessment (IFEU).

The green transition strategy of the EU aims to a climate neutral economy by increasing the use of renewable energy sources, being offshore floating photovoltaics (PV) one of the target technologies. Although floating PV is already used in shallow inland waters, its use in offshore environments is not common due to the harsh marine conditions and thus requires a revamping of the technology. The main objective of NaturSea-PV is to improve the overall lifetime, reliability, and maintainability of marine substructures for offshore floating PVs and thus reduce its LCOE. For this, NaturSea-PV will develop innovative structural designs capable of handling the marine conditions, at the same time ensuring the durability and minimizing (un)installation costs. The substructures will be built using newly developed environmentally friendly low carbon ultra high performance concrete and will be coated with new biobased antifouling and anticorrosive coatings. A specific predictive simulation toolkit will be developed to assess the mechanical and chemical durability of the new materials under marine conditions and will be validated against experimental data. The new materials and structural design will be first validated in the laboratory (testing), then integrated in prototypes to check the buildability and to be validated in relevant environments. NaturSea-PV will co-develop and co-validate the project results with external stakeholders while assessing the potential environmental and social impacts and perception to verify that the proposed solutions compatible with existing regulations and socio-economic activities taking part in the sea to maximize the impact of offshore floating-PV solutions. The results and knowledge from the project will be managed to have the most effective exploitation (e.g., IP) and widest possible communication and dissemination to forward the implementation of successful floating PV substructures with circular materials and low, competitive, LCOE.